Governments contracting with private agents for the provision of an impure public good must contend with agents who would potentially supply the good absent any payments. This additionality problem is centrally important to the use of carbon offsets to mitigate climate change. We analyze optimal...

Smoke from massive wildfires blanketed Indonesia in late 1997. This paper examines the impact this air pollution (particulate matter) had on fetal, infant, and child mortality. Exploiting the sharp timing and spatial patterns of the pollution and inferring deaths from quot;missing childrenquot;...

The National Park Service and other agencies have argued that our recreation lands face a crisis of deferred maintenance. This paper evaluates two proposals for funding public lands, increasing gate fees and taxing recreational gear. It analyzes the joint welfare effects of such taxes and the...

This paper discusses the problems facing the Mexican economy. It operates under a heavy burden of monopoly and regulation. We focus on two issues that should receive more attention in discussions of Mexican policy. (1) The family is under stress in Mexico and this retards the growth of skills of...

Charter schools were developed, in part, to serve as an R&D engine for traditional public schools, resulting in a wide variety of school strategies and outcomes. In this paper, we collect unparalleled data on the inner-workings of 35 charter schools and correlate these data with credible...

This paper revisits the classic argument that a system of local governments financing public service provision via property taxes will produce an efficient allocation of both housing and services if communities can implement zoning ordinances. The novel feature of the analysis is a dynamic model...

We develop a dynamic model of trading and investment with limited aggregate resources to study investment cycles. Unverifiable idiosyncratic investment opportunities imply market prices to play a role of rent distribution, distorting private investment incentives from a social point of view....